A matter of tradition

I’m a complete sucker for tradition – any kind of tradition, and unlike many of my friends who find the whole repetitive thing uninspired and exceptionally trying, it makes me feel warm, fuzzy and reassuringly safe.

After all, a tradition based on something genuinely significant, like Christmas or Easter, can hardly be compared to Shirley Valentine’s daily grind of steak and egg on Tuesdays and whatever it was on Wednesdays or your mum’s insistence on Thursday night family dinner. One is tradition, the other routine, and they should not be confused.

I adore Christmas. I don’t care that I have to put up with guests and family who I spend the rest of the year avoiding – that’s what the endless pitchers of pre-lunch Pimms are for. By the time you sit down it turns out they’re not that bad. Pimms No 1 Cup made with half lemonade, half soda, a glug of vodka, a slice of orange, lots of mint and a long strip of cucumber is the first in the very many Yuletide traditions the dwindling Drake family abide by.

I don’t care that, because of my British family heritage (and they are real sticklers for tradition), we slave for days over a very hot southern hemisphere stove making the perfect gravy (it’s a two-day process), brandy sauce so boozy it can put a young child to sleep with just one whiff and bread sauce so thick and aromatic it could be served as a complete meal.

Then there are the two different stuffings for the turkey – homemade sage and onion for the cavity and pork sausage and apple for the neck area. Heaven forbid I should try something a little more up to date and, in a word, different. Those are the stuffings we’ve always had, the ones my late mother and her mother before her made. Once I bravely tried not so much to shirk tradition as just to give it a new twist – with an American-style Martha Stewart recipe for corn bread stuffing (which included baking corn bread from scratch) it was greeted with, “Very nice dear but sage really goes so well with turkey, and granddad likes a bit of pork sausage.” Can’t say I blame them; I didn’t really like it much either.

I have made a few changes over the years though – given the heat and the fact that I, and my die-hard traditionalist sister are now the only ones in the kitchen…

The turkey now goes in the Weber. It took years (I exaggerate not) to convince everyone that it would taste the same (well almost) and we could still serve it with two-day gravy, roast potatoes, bread sauce and brussels, and that no we didn’t need to suddenly serve it with salad or not dress for lunch because it was a braai!

Next to undergo change was the gammon. This change, unlike my cornbread stuffing, was so successful that it was immediately claimed as tradition, henceforth never to be mucked with again.

You place a large gammon in a pot of half Stoney ginger beer and half chicken stock. Add one large quartered onion, a couple of cloves, at least five thick slices of fresh ginger, four of cloves garlic and a few peppercorns. Bring the whole lot to the boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for about 30 minutes. Remove pot from stove. Make sure the lid is secure, wrap in newspaper and then in at least two blankets. Find a snug armchair, camper cot or the corner of a small, seldom frequented guest loo and forget about it until the next day. Actually I pop by a few times within the 12-or-so-hour period and give it a little pat – because it’s Christmas and a time of goodwill to pigs as well as all men.

Remove the warm and now completely cooked and perfectly moist gammon from the liquid, peel off the skin, score in a lattice pattern and brush with marmalade or finely chopped ginger preserved in syrup. Grill to golden perfection and try not to look too smug when you bring it to table along with a bottle of Pinot Noir or even a Gewürtztraminer.

So that’s a little Drake tradition for you. Happy feasting.